Why do I stand here alone?

Why are my nights filled with doubt and my days filled with struggle?

God why am I stuck in a job I do not enjoy?

God why can’t I do all the things I say?

Why did you become death for me?

Why did you die for this hypocrite?

Your Word is sharper than a double edged sword and it is piercing my soul!

God why do I sometimes feel so alone?

Why do I struggle? Why do I ache? Why do You allow me to question You?

I don’t deserve Your love, can’t you see that?

But I need you God. I can’t live without you and God you know I have tried.

God Your love is bigger than the universe and Your hands hold me.

Nothing can take me out of them!

God I hold on to Your promises through the dark nights!

I bask in your blessings during the time of doubt!

The testing comes and I stand my ground!

I sin and come back to You to repent and learn!

God Your murdered Son picks my head up

And I don’t deserve it, none of us do

But You lifted us up anyway!

You saved me from my sin, while I was still your enemy!

I hated You and You could not help but love me!

God take me and mold me.

Glory to God! The Father, The Son, The Holy Ghost!

Glory to a Triune God, the most glorious!

To God be the glory for saving this wretched sinner!

To be able to take oneself lightly is a gift indeed, in fact, too many people take themselves way too seriously. Now do not get me wrong because there are things in this world that need to be taken seriously, but too many of us have forgotten that levity floats on the air better than seriousness. That is the gist of the philosophy of the buffoon; that levity with oneself allows a person to be able to take things seriously that need to be taken seriously. If we are always focusing on how important we are then we can never take seriously other people, causes, loves, and the things most important. Buffoonery allows us to look at the mistakes we make and learn, it allows us to take hurts from other people and laugh them off, it allows us to join in community with others and not have to worry about our egos, it allows us to dream about silly and serious things all at once. We are not the most important thing in the world…and if we were it would be a sad and desperate world indeed, would it not? I mess up way too much to have a world look to me as its star.

To follow the philosophy of buffoonery allows us to take seriously the causes in life that affect other people the most. When that focus from self is gone then the want to help others is constantly on our hearts and minds. The Bible says it best in 1st Corinthians 6:19-20 (NIV, Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica) “¹⁹ Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰ you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” We are not our own…so why focus on ourselves, why think that we can do it alone, why try and try when God wants us to allow the Holy Spirit to move in us and change us.

When I talk of not focusing on oneself I do not mean that we give up on the struggle to become a better person, just that we realize that we cannot do it by focusing on ourselves. The ultimate focus of buffoon philosophy is turn our focus and our viewpoint from us to God and his ways and then to people (the two greatest commandments come to mind). God will work perfection through us (taking a lifetime  and more!) and people will challenge us to become better, Godlier, and holier! A community of Christians who look outside themselves to God to find hope and worth would be a beautiful community indeed!

This philosophy of living is not easy, not always fun, and things do not always go our way…that is part of giving up our lives to God. The interesting thing about this philosophy is that it is full of joy, everlasting and always bubbling joy. Even in the hardest circumstances the love of Jesus coming through us seems to strike and move us to greater and better things, to joy everlasting. So take the journey away from self with me and move into a Christ filled life of fulfillment, purpose, joy, suffering, love, trials, and hope! It is funny because the buffoon philosophy is not something new but just another way of saying that Christ is all we need to survive and that He wants all of us to come to Him and find fulfillment in His everlasting love.

In the wondering of when You will come

Hurtling over the horizon to meet me.

In the air there is a feeling

Of noticed anticipation;

Or, perhaps, that is just the air in my lungs,

Coming out in worried gasps,

Revealing my tainted perception.

But whatever the situation

I know that my deliverance will come

And I will be lifted up

Above all the harms of earthly confrontation.

Realization comes to grasp me; however,

And I have a chance thought that maybe

I will not make it out of this one alive.

That maybe I am destined; moreover,

I am preordained to fall at this very spot,

At this very moment, in history

For a purpose I cannot see or understand;

But that defines me none the less, as it ought.

For to see is easy and to understand is light

But real living comes in leaps and grasps

Of faith that will live on

Long after I have lost the fight;

Because we are all destined to lose

Eventually. That does not mean that our Maker

Has given up his purpose, but that our role has changed.

From fighter to cheerer; a vast community of saints.

That is my constant struggle, that I seek to understand

That which I cannot even hope to glimpse

Until I am dead and gone.

Some may call me foolish for following such a command

And maybe I am, but being foolish is better than being wrong.

Just to prove that my life is real

And not just made up of disconnected moments.

That jumbled feeling you get when you helplessly

Lift your arms to the sky and will yourself

To be lifted up above yourself, to be made new.

That is what I want. Not the continuing pain

Of old bandages applied to old wounds

But a dressing that really heals

And, maybe, reveals

My scars to the world

Because who needs secrets…

They just are lies in disguise.

Life is a constant struggle for this man. He is surrounded on all sides by death, drugs, and suffering. Being part of it is just the nature of the game…what other choice does he have then to live or die trying to live? Everybody has a choice and that is what makes this album so amazing, it does not make concessions for his choices but just seeks to show them in all of their inglorious nature. We are not moralized at but are just shown the struggles of a life hard lived. We know the end of the story but that does not mean that we wish it could not be different. All of our stories end the same, though.

The music in the album is The Roots at their best. Solid soul music with beautiful and nimbly rapped voices intoning the tales of our drug dealing brother. The rapping of Black Thought has never been better or more bleak. We are shown the story not just told the story. By the end I could draw out all the sad details in my mind and they stayed their long after the album was over…I hope I never forget them and their sad truth. Beautifully sad truth…the irony of the album that it could make something so ugly so beautiful.

I miss you, lets get that out of the way at the beginning. I wish that you could be here and see my life and say, “Good job, Caleb!” I wish you could see my beautiful wife and life as she makes an OU joke and you mess with her because she is an OSU fan. I wish that you could play with my dumb dog Frisko. But you can’t.

Your death was something I did not understand. You couldn’t die, you were my Grandad. That is the way life goes though. Life and death and pain and sacrifice and love and suffering all wrapped into one gigantic ball called life; or a Willie Nelson song which I heard you loved so much.

You loom so large over my life, I think about you every day, and you have inspired me to follow God and make jokes and try to be a friend to people who are hard friends to have.

You died for those hard friends to have. You spend fifty years praying for them and then three years dying for them and I love you so much for it but it still hurts the same. Cancer did not have to succeed, the doctor did not have to miss it, and you did not have to forgive that doctor…but you did. God always had a plan for you; whether my little brain would understand or not or whether my adult brain would accept it or not.

It took me until I was eighteen years old to visit you grave. I had chances before but I just could not bring myself to do it. Your death was the first in my life and I did not understand until I visited your grave and thought about how you lived, loved, and died.

The thing is that you took seriously the commandment to take up your cross daily and to follow Jesus. You took is seriously that the greatest way to show love is to give up your life for somebody else. Maybe you did not always think that, as humans tend to stumble, but you knew God had a plan for your life…and your best friends were all brought to Jesus at your funeral. Thank God!

Life is full of so many changes. Life is full of death. That is just the nature of the beast. You transcend that, though. I know that you are waiting for me, my dad, your daughter, my brothers and sisters, my wife. God had a plan for your life and it required your death.  Jesus wept for the dead, but He also said, in John 16:33, ”I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.”

He has conquered the world and I can go on and be a Godly man who follows in the footsteps of those who have gone before me: suffering, sacrificing, living, and loving. I will always  miss you Grandad but you taught me, by example, to live life in the face of suffering and never to let go of Him who gives us comfort and peace. Amen.

With the countdown to this game so close to being over my obsession has reached a feverish pitch: of looking up all the news, perusing all the interviews even though I have read them countless times, and even looking at leaked photos of the manual. The amazing access to information that is allowed through the internet has enabled me to find out more and more about Skyrim, just wetting my thirst.

The only problem with all this is that I have neglected my novel that I have been writing. I have known what I want to write for ages but have not had the energy to write anything. It is a different kind of writers block which is caused by the easy click of the mouse on Google Chrome and typing in “youtube videos of skyrim” into the search bar.

So one thing I have taken to doing is that when I mean to sit down and really write then I turn off my internet connection. I just shut it off and make it so that it is a bigger hassle to turn it all on when I could be writing. This simple action has freed my creative juices and allowed them to flow freely again.

The internet, and video games, is something I enjoy a great deal, but their must be limits that I must impose on myself to allow my enjoyment of such things not to overwhelm me. Except for on the eleventh. I will be overwhelmed by Skyrim and no writing will get done.

As soon as I got into the Cain’s Ballroom I felt nervous. I felt absolutely uneasy. It was surreal. I was there to see my favorite band for the last time and that’s all I could think about. John Mark McMillan, Chris August, and Gungor where all great and their music was just incredible but nothing could take away the feeling that was in me; the steady unease. Then David Crowder came on and began to sing Give Us Rest (I’m guessing a song from their new album due out January 10th) and I felt all the unease lift off my shoulders and it only got better through out the concert for two reasons.

The first reason was because I could sense some of David Crowder and the bands weariness. From the lyrics to Give Us Rest and the other new song they played to the more loose feel of the concert I got the feeling of weariness (maybe I’m way off base). I do not say these things to deride the band but I say them because I understood finally a little bit more about my favorite band. Everybody expects so much out of David Crowder and the band: a revolutionary new album, an amazing concert, and an upbeat funny attitude. And the crazy thing is that they deliver! But I finally saw them as more than brilliant artists and musicians; I saw them as human, like me.

The second reason was because I felt the bigness of God that night and felt His overwhelming presence. I saw David Crowder and his band as they are: people in a long line of faithful followers of Christ. It gave me such hope! To be in the presence of such brilliant musicians and people and to realize that we were nothing compared to Christ and His Glory, nothing compared to the history of Christians gone before, and yet everything in the eyes of our God who loves us.

So end in peace David Crowder*Band and know you touched my life. Know that you have allowed yourselves to be used by Christ to touch lives. I thank God that He is so much bigger than our endings!

Some people think that to be satisfied is to be selfish but that is misleading and dangerous thinking. Also misleading, and maybe even more dangerous, is the thought that the ultimate goal in life is to be satisfied by the things that we make ourselves, give ourselves, or figure out for ourselves. Our satisfaction can become enlightenment, wealth, children, wife, boyfriend, job, or any number of possible things. Some of these things that we think bring satisfaction only bring a feel-goody niceness for a moment. Other things like drugs or mindless sex give a moment of supposed clarity or caring or wanting. All of those things are fleeting and dangerous and we walk on thin ice if we put our hope  in those things to get us through, and if you walk on thing ice long enough it will  break. The water underneath is mighty cold and unforgiving.

To be satisfied is not selfish, or fleeting for that matter,if one’s satisfaction is found in God. If he leads us by the hand and is our ultimate satisfaction, when everything else is stripped away, we can find love and grace to spread to our family, friends, and strangers. Life can be full of joy, even in moments of desolation and defeat, when God is our satisfaction and at the center of our life. All other things, good and bad, will eventually pass away, but their is a God who is looking down upon us, sent His son Jesus to die for us, and has us in His strong arms.  When trials and tribulations come we can turn to our satisfaction and find, imagine this, satisfaction.

Hebrews 13

Final Exhortations

¹ Let brotherly love continue. ² Don’t neglect to show hospitality, for by doing this some have welcomed angels as guests without knowing it. ³ Remember the prisoners, as though you were in prison with them, and the mistreated, as though you yourselves were suffering bodily. ^[a] 4 Marriage must be respected by all, and the marriage bed kept undefiled, because God will judge immoral people and adulterers. ⁵ Your life should be free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have, for He Himself has said, I will never leave you or forsake you. ⁶ Therefore, we may boldly say:

The Lord is my helper;

I will not be afraid.

What can man do to me?

Don’t be me, I can’t win the fight.

I go up on stages to make my name

And come down realizing I can’t win the game

No matter how hard I try, and I’ve tried my best

But I just can’t seem to pass this test

Of fire and and sacrifice.

So,
Don’t be me, I can’t do anything right.

Don’t be me, just give up the fight.

Cuz you can’t win unless you cut out your soul

And leave your blood in the healing pool.

Trees will grow and blossom in May

But soon I will pass away.

So,
Don’t be me, I don’t try to do right.

Don’t be me, I ain’t worth the fight.

And I’m looking on, and looking over

Those white cliffs to a white land

And He is calling me there

I don’t have to be scared…

I don’t have to be scared.

Be me if you want to be,

But I’m going to be more, I swear it.